Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Status Update

Sorry it has been a little while since I last posted. We have completed our Phase I final report and it should be available shortly for download… In the meantime, I will be posting some excerpts and summary items.

Great job to my team putting this document together! Particularly, Dr. Doug Talk (medical liaison), Mark Schaffer (project engineer), Liz Buchen (cost analyst), and Mark Elwood (technical illustrator).

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Artificial-Gravity Inducing Torpor Habitat!

Here is a view of our torpor-based, artificial gravity inducing Mars transfer habitat. This features all the same systems, technologies, crew complement (6), and margins as our baseline torpor habitat module - however - it is able to rotate about its main axis.

Depending on the rotation speed, gravity fields ranging from 0 to a full earth-G can be experienced by the crew. With the crew in torpor, we don't have to worry about uncomfortable gravity gradients and coriolis effects, so we can spin faster and with a much smaller radii than possible with a conscious/active crew. The total gross mass for the habitat is roughly the same as the baseline.

Nice job from Mark Elwood at SpaceWorks Studios for illustrating this option for us!